Every first CV faces the same problem: the format assumes you have employment history, and you do not. The instinct is to pad — listing every school subject, describing yourself as a hardworking team player, adding "references available on request" to fill the page. All of that is visible, and all of it works against you.
What follows is a structure that works when the employment section is empty, and the reasoning behind each part.
Start with what you can evidence
A first CV should lead with the most concrete thing you have. Usually that is a project, a piece of coursework, or a responsibility you actually held. It is almost never a personal statement.
Concrete means specific and checkable. "Built a personal finance tracker in React that I use daily; handles recurring transactions and monthly summaries" is concrete. "Passionate about front-end development with strong problem-solving skills" is not — and every recruiter has read the second sentence several thousand times.
If you have nothing built, that is the gap worth closing before you send out fifty applications. One finished, explainable project changes a first CV more than any amount of rewording.
The structure that works
Contact details. Name, email, phone, city, and a link to your LinkedIn profile or portfolio. No photograph unless the norm in your country requires one. No date of birth, marital status or national ID number.
A short summary — three lines maximum. What you are, what you are looking for, and the single most relevant thing about you. Write it last, and rewrite it for each type of role.
Projects or coursework. For each: what it does, what you used, and one thing that was difficult. The difficulty line matters — it is what separates "I followed a tutorial" from "I understood what I was doing".
Education. Institution, qualification, dates, and relevant modules if the qualification is not obviously related to the role. Grades only if they help you.
Experience. Any paid work at all goes here, including work unrelated to your field. Retail, hospitality, tutoring, family business, volunteering. Describe responsibility, not duties: "trained four new staff members on the till system" says more than "worked on the till".
Skills. Specific and honest. List tools you could be asked about in an interview without embarrassment. A rated skills bar showing "React: 80%" invites the question of what the missing 20% is.
Tailor one thing per application
Sending the same CV to forty employers is efficient and ineffective. Sending forty entirely rewritten CVs is effective and unsustainable.
The workable middle is to change one thing: the summary. Two or three lines rewritten to match the role you are applying for, using the language the listing itself uses. It takes two minutes and it visibly answers the question the reader has, which is whether you read the advert.
What to cut
Cut the objective statement that says you want a challenging role in a dynamic organisation. Cut hobbies unless they are genuinely relevant or genuinely interesting. Cut "references available on request" — it is assumed. Cut any skill you would not want to be tested on. Cut the second page: a first CV that runs to two pages is usually one page of content and one page of padding.
Before you send it
Read it aloud. Anything you would not say to a person is probably filler. Check every date, every spelling of a company or institution name, and the file name — "CV_final_v3_REAL.pdf" is a small unforced error.
Save as PDF unless the employer asks otherwise, and name the file with your own name.
What this will and will not do
A well-structured first CV gets you a fair reading. It does not manufacture experience you do not have, and it will not get you shortlisted for roles that genuinely require several years of it. The applications worth your time are the ones where you meet most of the core requirements — and where the CV's job is simply to not get in the way.